Apple in review: Lion friendly but maybe not green

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The big news for Apple came right at the end of the month with the release of OS X 10.8, except that Apple's not really referring to it as 10.8, at least on first glance. Instead, 10.8 goes by its marketing name; what you buy for $20.99 is "OS X Mountain Lion". Mountain Lion made its debut on July 25, although the vagaries of the international date line meant that the vast majority of Australian users weren't able to get it to start downloading until the clock ticked over into July 26.

Mountain Lion brought with it a number of improvements and updates to other Apple software properties, from iWork to iMovie, as well as an upgrade to Safari to version 6. At the same time, however, Safari for Windows was quietly culled, or at best left sitting on version 5 with little mention of it anywhere on Apple's web site. It's still there if you know where to look, but Apple's previous history on products that they don't mention any more suggests that it's gone the way of the Dodo for any future updates.

Speaking of killing things, July was also the month that saw Apple's previous cloud strategies - MobileMe and iWork - bite the dust in favour of Apple's new Mountain-Lion-centric iCloud strategy.

Apple maintains that it doesn't make all that much revenue out of apps; they're a mechanism to promote the entire Apple ecosystem and sell more iDevices, in essence. Still, it's maintained an iron grip on the App buying process, or did, right up to the point that an enterprising Russian hacker devised a means for ordinary iPhones to fool Apple's servers into thinking that in-app purchases - a vital part of the "free" app economy - had already been paid for. Ethical issues aside, the other catch to this was that you had to hand over your Apple account details to the hacker in order to get it to work. It's probably coincidental, but Apple also made its first ever appearance at the Black Hat Security Conference in July, talking up iOS security measures.

Apple didn't just encounter app grief in the financial sense either, as a brief blip in the Apple store update process led to applications being served out to users that did little more than crash. The problem was undoubtedly exacerbated by the fact that one of the first affected apps was the phenomenally popular Instapaper - although on the other hand, the fact that the developer of a popular app noticed it no doubt led to it being fixed rather quickly.

Sometimes you win, even when you lose. Apple and Samsung have been fighting tablet battles for almost as long as they've both had tablets in the marketplace. In the UK, Judge Colin Birss ruled that Samsung didn't infringe Apple's registered design, which might seem like a victory for Samsung, right up until the Judge ruled that Samsung's tablets weren't likely to be confused for Apple's tablets because "They are not as cool." Guess which bit of the judgement got the most headlines?

While still at the Government level, and with a more local focus, the parliamentary inquiry into IT pricing led by Labor's Ed Husic kicked off in July, and Apple drew sharp criticism for refusing to appear before the public section of the inquiry. Apple has apparently made a private submission, but was blasted by Husic for not appearing in public to answer questions as well.

The Rumour Mill

Typically the rumours at this time of year focus around the next iteration of the iPhone platform and less on the iPad. This year things seem a little different; the speculation on the iPhone appears to have settled on a consensus of sorts, while it's the iPad that's the focus of a lot of rumour mongering.

The next generation iPhone, it seems to be agreed, will feature a 4 inch display screen with a smaller dock connector, and pictures that emerged at the end of the month pretty much bring all these factors together, along with a design that isn't a radical departure from anything seen out of Apple's design team for some time. Just because everyone agrees that it's so doesn't necessarily mean that this is what Apple will roll out, however.

A clear part of what fuels the Apple rumour industry is that Apple does spend a fair chunk of cash developing prototypes, and it's sometimes those that are spotted and declared to be the real deal by the many rumour sites that exist. A prototype of the original iPad surfaced in July, and by surfaced, it's perhaps more apt to say that it beached itself; with a 12" display this was the proverbial white whale of tablets.

Not in the gigantic category is the persistent rumour that Apple will release a smaller form factor iPad that most are dubbing the "iPad Mini"; a 7.85 inch budget iPad with a Sharp indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) display screen. If it's a real product, as distinct from a prototype, it's suggested it'll sell for around US$250, putting it squarely up against Google's Nexus 7 tablet that launched very successfully in July.

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